During emergency situations, medical, rescue, and security industry workers frequently encounter persons that are unconscious or otherwise unable to communicate. Yet, such persons often require immediate medical attention. Often, such situations arise outside of the controlled environment of a hospital setting and additional time is required to transport the victim to the nearby medical facility. Upon arrival to the nearby hospital, however, the medical personnel need yet additional time to obtain the victim's critical information prior to providing the required medical care. In case of urgent blood transfusions, for example, it is of utmost importance to obtain the victim's blood type prior to commencing the required procedure. Thus, the time lost during transport to the hospital, as well as during running the necessary tests to obtain the victim's medical information, is likely to greatly decrease the risk of survival for some victims. Therefore, having immediate access to victim's critical information is imperative to patient survival.
While medical identification cards and bracelets with imprinted medical and emergency contact information may provide the required information to the on-site emergency personnel, the emergency personnel still need to allocate time to verify that the imprinted information actually belongs to the person in possession of the card or bracelet in order to prevent potentially deadly mistakes during treatment. This may require the emergency personnel to spend time to locate the victim's wallet in order to cross-reference the information on the card or bracelet with that on a driver's license or photo id, for example. If other identification is lost during the emergency, such verification may not be possible, which increases the risk to the patient. In addition to needing time to verify the identity of the victim or patient, the emergency personnel need to allocate time to convey whatever information they do find to the nearby medical facilities. This results in yet further delays prior to commencing patient treatment and increases the risk to the patient.
Furthermore, in above situations, the emergency personnel are not always able to promptly notify the third parties associated with the victim. This further decreases the flow of necessary information and eliminates the chances of promptly obtaining the critical information about the victim from the third parties prior to treatment. Disaster recovery strategies require real time acquisition of personal data with verification and location.